In designing a wall-mounted thermostat that is relatively sleek and small it is nevertheless desirable to allow for terminals that have ease of access and ease of installation. In particular it is desirable to allow for ease of wall mounting and for ease of connection of the control wires to the terminals. Thermostat wires are often solid wires of relatively heavy gauge. As a result the wires protruding from a small hole in the wall are rather stiff and may be difficult to bend and otherwise manipulate and to attach properly to thermostat connection terminals. Also it is desirable to have a tool free method of wire connection (i.e. without the use screws and/or the use of screw driver).
It is to be appreciated that although exemplary embodiments are presented herein for the particular context of HVAC system control, there are a wide variety of other resource usage contexts for which the embodiments are readily applicable including, but not limited to, water usage, air usage, the usage of other natural resources, and the usage of other (i.e., non-HVAC-related) forms of energy, as would be apparent to the skilled artisan in view of the present disclosure. Therefore, such application of the embodiments in such other resource usage contexts is not outside the scope of the present teachings.